1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a control method of the information processing apparatus and a computer program thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Such an application is proposed that a plurality of tasks with respect to a document held by an image processing apparatus such as a multi function peripheral (MFP) are combined and are registered as a flow of a series of processing, so that the user can read out the series of processing to execute the application. With the above described application, a combination of processing to be used frequently can be executed without troublesome operations. The flow of the series of processing in which the plurality of tasks are combined is defined as a processing flow. In other words, the processing flow is a series of processing including a plurality of processing (tasks). The task is executable with respect to an image data and is the processing which can be executed according to the respective functions of the image processing apparatus having multiple functions. For example, examples of the task of the image processing apparatus include scanning of a document, printing of image data, transmission (of an e-mail, a facsimile, a file or the like) and storage in a disk (i.e., storage in a hard disk installed in the image processing apparatus or an exterior apparatus). However, the task of the image processing apparatus is not limited to the above described processing. Examples of the image data include text data and image data. The processing flow cooperates with a plurality of applications, which can provide various tasks, in addition to the image processing apparatus providing tasks. Examples of the applications include an application which runs on the image processing apparatus and an application which runs on an information processing apparatus such as a computer.
Recently, such a technique has been discussed that preliminarily defines a condition necessary for executing a task or a processing flow, and checks whether the condition is satisfied. For example, as a condition for executing a task such as scanning of a document, the document to be scanned should have a specified business form or a number of the documents to be scanned should be the predetermined number. The condition for executing a task is tied to the task or a processing flow and the condition for executing the task and is checked after the task is executed. Accordingly, in a case where the execution condition is not satisfied, the processing flow is determined to be an error or an alarm can be raised to notify that the execution condition is not satisfied.
On the other hand, the image processing apparatus which displays a button for executing the processing flow is also discussed. This image processing apparatus starts execution of the processing flow corresponding to this button in response to a click of the button by a user. Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2005-262754 discusses a document printing apparatus which records, together with a processing target document, instruction information describing processing to be executed with respect to the processing target document, onto a print medium. This document printing apparatus prints on the processing target document a bar code indicating, for example, the instruction information describing a series of service processing and reads out the processing target document to automatically execute the series of service processing. Further, in an image processing apparatus discussed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2006-001242, keywords are set to an intended target and an intended object set for the intended target, respectively. This image processing apparatus selects a predetermined keyword from the set keywords and displays either one of the intended target or the intended object which corresponds to the selected keyword.